Thu 21 Jun 2018
Pulp PI Stories I’m Reading: ERLE STANLEY GARDNER “Lord of the High Places.”
Posted by Steve under Pulp Fiction , Stories I'm Reading[8] Comments
ERLE STANLEY GARDNER “Lord of the High Places.” Speed Dash #12. Top-Notch Magazine, February 1, 1928.
When I started reading this story, I was under the distinct impression that it was the very first appearance of Richard “Speed” Dash, since Gardner spent so much space explaining who he was and what skills he had. Not so. I was wrong about that. With the resources available to anyone on the Internet in today’s world, it was not difficult to learn that it came along well after the middle of the series. Speed Dash’s first adventure into crime-solving appeared in the February 1, 1925, issue of Top-Notch Magazine. There were twenty in all, all for the same magazine.
In his early days Speed Dash worked in side shows and circuses as an acrobat, or in particular a so-called “human fly,” with the strength and ability to climb nearly perpendicular surfaces, using, we are told, only the tips of his fingers. But after doing a regime of experimental exercises prescribed by a noted psychiatrist, he developed what is called in the vernacular a photographic memory, and he decided to turn his talent to crime-solving.
In “Lord of the High Places” he his hired by a rich debutante who is looking for adventure. She has been shown a map of hidden treasure on an island somewhere in the South Seas, and wanting some excitement in her otherwise boring life, she has agreed to finance the venture, but only if she can convince Speed Dash to come along.
The map is a phony, of course, and Dash is prepared for that, but what he does not plan on is that all of his backup contingencies will fail, and he and the two women are quickly caught between the gang they came in with, another rival gang of pirates, and the savage natives already on the island. See the cover for the means that Dash finds of making his escape. It is quite accurate.
This is the first adventure of Speed Dash I have read, and it will probably be the last, as I have sold off all my copies of Top-Notch Magazine in which his adventures were recorded. I do not think I am missing anything, however. Action-adventure is not typical Erle Stanley Gardner fare, and he is no better than average at it. Many pulp writers knew their exotic locales a whole better than I think Gardner did.
An interesting change-of-pace, in other words, but far from essential, even for Gardner fans.
June 21st, 2018 at 10:46 pm
TOP NOTCH came out twice a month and was published during 1910-1937. I used to collect it but finally gave up because the fiction was slanted towards the teenage boy market. During the 1930’s the magazine came out monthly and tried to capture a more adult reader but it finally died in 1937, probably a victim of the depression.
I still have issues with Speed Dash, The Human Fly stories by Gardner. I consider him a hero character since he was the usual clean living guy with special abilities, etc. But again this series was aimed for teenagers in my opinion.
June 22nd, 2018 at 7:32 am
I never tried reading any of the other stories in the issue of TOP NOTCH I read this Gardner story in, but I’m sure that you’re correct, Walker, in characterizing them as being aimed at the teen-aged boy market.
My sense is, though, that this particular Speed Dash story was designed for adults with less sophisticated reading tastes and/or abilities, based on the fact that the tale is basically flat, with no unusual or unexpected twists to it, manufactured around a situation in which the hero can use his special abilities to great advantage.
June 22nd, 2018 at 8:30 am
You are probably right Steve. Actually Speed Dash is not as childish or silly as some of the hero pulp characters with the annoying sidekicks(Doc Savage with Monk and Ham; G-8 with Bull and Nippy).
June 23rd, 2018 at 3:11 pm
Raymond Chandler wrote in a letter to Erle Stanley Gardner that he studied Gardner’s stories before he began writing. Chandler biographers have considered that epistolary passage as one of the great riddles, right up there with the riddle of the Sphinx. What could Chandler possibly gotten from Gardner, especially that time when Gardner was the churning out stories by the pound?
Not all good writers are good story writers. Like learning how to plot points using linear geometry, the mechanics of the craft getting the story from point “a” to point “b” and then to point “c”, for some, takes a little bit of practice and study. Once a solid plot is established, an author can hang on it all his or her literary trappings.
For Gardner, his ability to make a sale was his knack to pull a plot out of a random occurrence. Chandler too needed a plot but his perspective, prose and perceptions into human nature made the sale for him. He learnt the plotting for Gardner, the rest had nothing to with Gardner.
According to Francis Fugate, in Secrets of the World’s Bestselling Writer: The Storytelling Techniques of Erle Stanley Gardner, 2014; Gardner had seen in 1923 a human fly scaling a building and jotted in his notebook this story idea:
“Start a series of stories dealing with the idea of a human fly who is employed from time to time by detectives and crooks alike and who sometimes has adventures as a freelance.”
When Gardner eventually submitted “The Case of the Misplaced Thumbs” about Speed Dash, the human fly, Top Notch magazine editor Arthur Scott sent back it twice before the third draft was accepted.
Again according to Fugate, one of the Street and Smith owners liked the idea of a character who lead a clean life and trained to excel so he ordered Scott to print more Speed Dash stories. The success the company had with Frank Merriwell in dime novels and nickle libraries might have been on his mind. This same editorial or managerial philosophy within the company probably was responsible for Doc Savage ten years later.
As Gardner described Speed Dash, “The things he did could only have been done by one who never inhaled the faintest wisp of tobacco smoke, never touched his lips to a beer glass or looked at a woman’s neatly turned ankle.”
June 23rd, 2018 at 4:23 pm
The Fugate book is new to me, Daryl, but now I know about it, I will have to get a copy. I wonder what kind of sales potential a book like this might have. Perry Mason might still be known to the general public today, but Gardner’s probably far less.
On the other hand, I see its sales rank on Amazon is #1,523,528 and 17 people have reviewed, neither of which is all that bad. (I have seen books on Amazon with sales ranks in the 20 millions.)
June 23rd, 2018 at 3:52 pm
I guess Daryl’s last paragraph means I’ll never be another Speed Dash. At one time I smoked tobacco; I still drink beer; and I still appreciate “a woman’s neatly turned ankle.” In other words I’m doomed!
June 23rd, 2018 at 4:27 pm
Given those qualifications, I think you’d have to say that Speed Dash’s don’t come along very often. Not any more they don’t.
June 24th, 2018 at 4:05 pm
H. Bedford-Jones, acknowledged King of the Pulps, officially did a little ceremony and turned his title over to Gardner who even before Perry Mason was making a six figure salary in the pulps.
While it is true Gardner could be slap dash in style his better series like Ed Jenkins in BLACK MASK and his prospector tec for ARGOSY are well written and admirable and though they can be repetitive if read too close together the Lester Leith novellas are among the most entertaining of their type since the high old days of Arsene Lupin.
I’m fairly sure Chandler rewrote a 10,000 word Ed Jenkins story from BLACK MASK (I can’t see him using a Black Burton tale), so what he learned was not merely about plot, it was pace, movement, action, and most likely that famous “enter man with a gun” business for whenever the story lags. The Jenkins stories are models of their kind and still read well today.
Reading (or rereading) Gardner’s best pulp stories a few of the novels just prior to Perry Mason, early Mason novels, and the Lam and Cool tales can remind you just good Gardner could be when he was in the groove.
A good deal of his work is available in ebook form and Hard Case has reprinted a few of the A. Fair books.
As for readers not knowing who Perry Mason was,most of them don’t know who anyone is that isn’t in a current movie series or comic book, and that argument is true about most popular literature. Even here I wonder how many would know Mr. Tutt, Anderson Crow, or Aureilus Smith, all once well known popular creations, yet all of them are easily found. The Hammetts, Chandlers, Flemings, and a handful of others are the anomalies. If not for Max Allan Collins Spillane would fall in this category and I fear Ross Macdonald and James M. Cain already do.
It really says nothing about most writers work that they aren’t read as often today, it’s just the nature of the beast.